La teoria dell'austerità nel sistema economico europeo

We analyse the evolution of the European crisis, its intellectual roots and causes, and the consequence of the austerity economic policies: we rely on our previous econometric estimates, which show a positive impact of public investments as a jump start for private investments and employment. US and European economic impact on growth and public debt are assessed. According to our estimates the European economic crisis in Southern European countries has been precipitated by the sudden consumption drop caused by the austerity policies: the consequences of these policies have been widespread causing an economic and social fracture within the European countries, an upsurge of unemployment and poverty, and a slump of births. We argue that Germany was “fortunate”, enjoying the coincidence of accessing new Asian markets, when China joined the WTO in 2001, with the right high-quality products: the fast and huge increase of Germany current account balance has been coupled with the lack of its domestic and European aggregate demand. The deflationary pressures of the austerity policies have been amplified by the slowing growth rate of China and the economic impact on the unusually high export/GDP ratio of the Germany economy. We discuss in detail the positive role of the welfare state in the European countries, which is crucial to cope with the extreme heterogeneity of its demographic structure and the effort to resume economic growth in Europe.